Well, it's true that if you already possess a passport and want to copy it, it's essentially the same problem with and without an RFID. It's also true that the RFID chip does stop the basic hack of replacing the photo in the passport (since the data on the chip is persumably read-only, and the chip can't be replaced without mutilating the passport).
I think what the esteemed spokesman missed is the privacy implications (I can now read your passport without your knowledge). In particular, you can clone these passports without actually holding the original. In the past to clone a passport you needed the co-operation of its owner (if you steal a passport it's known to be stolen). Now you can make your own sure-to-be valid passport by just stepping into the airport and choosing an appropriate victim (someone who looks like you, perhaps?).

The ID cards themselves are just a distraction. The real agenda is the setting up of a big database with information on all citizens. While everyone debates ID cards, they get to do what they want with the database proposal. They can back down on ID cards later, and everyone is happy.

Your birth certificate number could be read as CN.DN.cert-number. You have a social insurance number, social security number, or equivalent. You are numbered by your driver's license, your chequing account, your power bill, and a host of other unique identifiers.

I have no objection to SECURE identification. I object to wasting billions on useless crap.

Yes, governments have databases about the citizens of their countries, for tax purposes, medical purposes, driver licensing and so on. That in itself is not unreasonable, as long as the data collected is necessary for the purpose, properly and securely handled, with suitable checks made on those with access to it and confidentiality maintained.

The National Identity Register in the UK, however, will combine most of the existing government databases into a single, centralised point of failure. In practice, it will likely be the case that most government departments and many outside agencies will have access to all of the records about an individual, not just those they have reason to see.

A second major concern is that the NIR will track every time it is checked. That won't help with the identity theft problem that follows from the above, unless the security of access is near-perfect across many thousands of people with access to the database. It will, however, mean that once the national ID card becomes the "easy option" for identity verification, the government has a handy record of each citizen's entire life: where they shop, which financial services they've been using, jobs they've been applying for, where they've travelled and who with, etc. There is simply no need for any state organisation to keep this sort of information about any citizen, other than when conducting legitimate surveillance of a suspect for genuine security purposes, with independent oversight.

Identity thieves, however, already happy to be part of the fastest-growing and most profitable crime wave in recent history, have hit the jackpot. Just along the Slashdot front page from this story as I write this, there is another article estimating that 100 million personal information leaks have occurred within the past couple of years or so. If that combination isn't reason enough to stop the NIR plans right now, I don't know what kind of sanity prevails in the government's universe.

Duh. And why ID cards would avoid terrorism in any way? You can make a bomb regardless of having an ID card or not.

My point was really that (here in the UK at least, so I don't expect you to realise it) the ID cards are always pushed by the government as the way to make us all more secure against terrorism. It will save us all, you see. It's the primary reason for introducing the scheme. Never mind that most experts (inc. the police and MI5, iirc) disagree - and you, as someone living in an ID card carrying country, seem to disagree too.

I can tell however that not having an ID card was one of the reasons it took so many time to know the identity of all the victims of UK bombings.

Oh yay, you certainly know how to sell me on the benefits of having an ID car

It's also true that the RFID chip does stop the basic hack of replacing the photo in the passport (since the data on the chip is persumably read-only, and the chip can't be replaced without mutilating the passport).

Stronger than that, the data on the chip is digitally signed, so even if you can tracelessly replace the chip in the passport with a different one that has the photo you want, you're not going to be able to generate the appropriate digital signature for the altered data. This technology makes the passports effectively unalterable, as long as the chip is intact.

I think what the esteemed spokesman missed is the privacy implications (I can now read your passport without your knowledge). In particular, you can clone these passports without actually holding the original.

Not exactly. To read the passport data you have to have the authentication key. To get the authentication key, you need to have the passport, because the data that the key is derived from is printed inside. Note, however, that it has been shown that a large enough portion of the printed data is guessable, given basic information like the passport holder's name and a guess at his or her age, that the rest can be brute-forced pretty quickly. So there *is* a possibility it could be read without the owner's knowledge, but it's not completely trivial and does require some additional information.

The US has addressed this issue by putting a shielding mesh in the passport cover, which isolates the chip when the cover is closed.

"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip."

Just like it is hard to see why anyone would want to blow up an aircraft? I think that people are still thinking within the sandbox and not realising that the real risk is what we have not yet thought of. There will be lots of reasons to want to access the information and to change it or learn to create false IDs that Joe Average security assumes to be valid because it is state of the art.

Well thank goodness! and here I was worried that the cost of fake paper was going to climb out of the range of the petty crook. I want to thank the developers and the bone heads in government for insuring the future of honest crooks.

As part of my research on driver's licensing issues, when states added photos to driver's licenses (starting in the late 60's) the word "fraud" never entered the picture. Driver's licenses were essentially fraud free documents before the photographs were added--so it really never entered anyone's mind that things would change once the document became more powerful/useful/trusted.

Cloning a passport has become no harder or easier thanks to RFID. But Identity theft will become much much easier.

Couldn't one kill the RFID chip by putting the passport in a microwave oven for a minute?

I can't imagine the rubber-stamper at immigration control not letting me through because he can't read my RFID tag... I'm sure a good percentage of non-zapped passports would fail to scan for one reason or another. If enough people did it, then they justn wouldn't be able to rely on them, period.

You make the invalid assumption that people at immigration desks are reasonable people - they are *not*. Some of them are little Hitlers with bad attitude, and the ones who aren't have their hands tied by the law - they have no discretion at all. If the law says you can't enter without a working chip, the immigration officer (even the world's friendliest and most reasonable one) has no choice but to deport you. Just as they would deport you if your passport photo was mutilated.

(I'll make one exception for the little Hitlers - one notable aberration is Houston's immigration desks - those people are polite and make you feel welcome to the United States - truly refreshing to get to an immigration desk where it isn't just stony faces and demands to see that you have a return plane ticket. I frequently travel through Houston and they've always had good people there. Dallas Ft.Worth on the other hand - I will never travel through that airport again).

Please stop with the FUD. The new passport is bad enough without adding fuel to the fire. Check out the official information according to the US Government.

What will happen if my Electronic passport fails at a port-of-entry?

The chip in the passport is just one of the many security features of the new passport. If the chip fails, the passport remains a valid travel document until its expiration date. The bearer will continue to processed by the port-of-entry officer as if he/she had a passport without a chip.

I disagree. It's pretty good security. It does have one flaw, that there's not enough entropy in the MRID (the info printed on the inside that is needed to authenticate to the chip) which makes brute force searches too easy, but if that flaw were fixed, I would call it very good security.

Use some imagination. Passports are delivered by post. It would require the co-operation of a postman but it is possible to intercept the delivery of the passport. Scan the information without opening the envelope then deliver the passport as normal a day late. As the recepient doesn't know when the passport was sent, and delivery delays are sadly common, they have no idea that their passport has been cloned.

Apply for a bank account/credit card... identity theft stuff. A passport is prime ID. I believe you can do as much with it as with a birth certificate (probably more since you cannot use a birth certificate to get back into the U.S. by air and soon by ground as well). In fact, I wouldn't doubt that you could order a duplicate birth certificate with it... or maybe go to a social security office with it and claim you lost your SSN card and would like to know the number. You could probably cause a lot of p

"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip." Hmmm... it's also hard to see why anyone would want my credit card information, SSN, address, etc. I'm sure nobody really wants to know any personal information about me at all, and I'm sure nobody would ever want to forge any of my identifying documentation.

Something is just wrong with the UK's Home Office. Today I read that they will now classify panty theifs as sex offenders [sundaymirror.co.uk], receiving the same long-term classification on the sex offenders' registry as child abusers, rapists, and child pornographers.

If my name is written on someone else's panties, I demand to know why!

ob Simpsons:Skinner: Oh, it's a miracle no one was hurt.Otto: I stand on my record - fifteen crashes and not a single fatality!Lou: Let's see your license, pal.Otto: No can do. Never got one. But, if you need proof of my identity, I wrote my name on my underwear... Oh wait, these aren't mine!Skinner: Well that tears it! Until you get a license and wear your own underwear, mister, you are suspended without pay!

Here is the rest of the quote for those of you who don't want to RTFA:

"Other than the photograph, which could be obtained easily by other means, they would gain no information that they did not already have - so the whole exercise would be pointless: the only information stored on the ePassport chip is the basic information you can see on the personal details page."

The spokesman said the chip was one part of the security features of the ePassport.

what a fucking crock of shit. someone stealing a womens underwear off the line is a LONG jump to being a pedo. what possible connection can there be between a weirdo taking an adult womens underwear and them being sexually attracted to children? thats right there isn't. it's same bogus thinking that links homosexuals to pedo. and that crap has been debunked for decades.
oh and as for your "it's about protection" argument, yeah they will take your liberty all the while softly whisphering in your ear "it's for your protection"

This is absolute bullshit. There has been absolutly no research to determine if an 18 year old who has sex with a 17 year old classmate, or a guy streaking as part of a college fraternity prank, or a guy who has consentual sex with other adult men in a public-park lavatory, or the couple who park up on "lovers lane" to have sex, or a married couple who has oral sex in Arkansas, or the 90% of "sex offenders" who never did anything that wouldn't be legal or a misdemeanor if they where only done in San Fransico or Amsterdam, are likely to do anything!

Only a tiny fraction of the people who are being branded second class citizens for life, and being subjected to a lifetime of harrasment and violence at the hands of vigilantes, did anything remotely like rape or molestation. Most commited only voluntary, consentual sex acts with people their own age.

Sex offender lists, and their sister paranoia law enforcement, Do Not Fly list, are part of our societies current irrational, paranoid, fear of boogie men - being afraid of sex offenders or terrorists depending on where you live and your political beliefs. Personally, I am far more disturbed by the people who believe their friends or neighbors are all devious sexual preditors lurking to rape their kids - If anything I would be far more worried about the guy who is constantly paranoid of sex offenders (ala Mark Foley), than I would the college football players who get arrested doing a panty raid on the girls sorority. Or I would be far more frightened of the people who think everyone named "Mohammed" may be a terrorist, than I would be of someone named "Mohammed" sitting next to me on a plane.

True. Now imagine how much worse it would be if there were criminals before they joined. In theory they're already law-abiding when they start.
If you don't think the standard is high enough now then imagine if it were to be lowered.

Since say 10% of the population (regardless of whether they are police) is lets say "bad". I suppose you don't trust anyone in the world then, right? Afterall, in your world, unless everyone is perfect, the whole lot is bad and untrustworthy.

In other words, "If everybody else does it, then it is OK for us to do it."

What a perfect example of exactly that kind of "cop logic" used to justify the thin blue line that the promotes the distrust that the GP expressed.

Awesome. Let's book kids who sneak some booze when they're underage with the same charge as heroin dealers. They're probably just building up the courage to do something more serious. Of course, there's always the whacky notion that the punishment should fit the crime that was actually committed rather than what we think they might do in the future.

Sure, it's theft.. but how do you know they're getting a sexual thrill out of it? And that it's a sexual crime?Some people might just like to be steal people's underwear, because they think it's a funny thing to do. (Though of course, yes, there are some people who... really like underwear.)

Maybe we should start classifying adulterers as sex offenders too?So someone who steals a magazine (or an online porn account) for the purpose of getting a sexual thrill should be classified as a sex offender?

Oh is it only because the victim felt violated? What if a mugger looks "strangely" at a lady after taking her purse and other valuables (ID, camera phone etc) but lets her go, and she feels violated? Should the mugger be classified as a sex offender too?

In a nation of laws, people get punished for what they actually do, not for some prediction of what they might or might not do in the future. Apparently, you prefer to live in a totalitarian nation, in which the state can charge anybody with absolutely anything if they just so please.

As it may be, the people in charge of budgetary approval for the programs which put all of these RFID solutions
into place will steadfastly deny that anything is wrong until they are forced to do so, as agreeing that those are
potentially high security risks would otherwise equate it with having to backtrack on what they previously approved,
even though they were amply forewarned by many in the security-related field.

It's really about not losing face at any cost, lest people start questioning other methods they employ.

Human nature, really. Look no further than the voting machines controversy for parallels here in the US.

How long would it take for some 3 letter agency to show up at their door in the US?

Blow it. First they'd have to prove you did it, and pray tell, if the thing is a perfect clone, then by definition there is not going to be a way thats 100% certifiably accurate to tell them apart. You will be 100% at the mercy of the justice system, and it has amply proved many times that it doesn't have a clue, and couldn't buy one if the money was appropriated for it.

"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip."Even if the info on the chip is just the same as what's printed in plain sight as they say... it's still defeating one of the security measures in short shrift. How is that not a concern? The fact that the electronic portion of it can be read and copied without actually needing the item (just need to be near it) is a great concern.

Also, the article states that the key to some encrypted information on the chip is something that's

It's a scary world when those who are old and have little clue about technology (the politicians) are told they need a high tech solution to a security issue.

Careful. The hippies used to complain about how all the old farts in power didn't have a clue back then. Now they're running things, and look where we are. I shudder to think about what the world will be like when it's YOUR turn...

Well, I saw Billy say it in a stand up performance (the one with his name in large pink letters behind him), and a quick check on the web for the quote finds it being attributed to him by all I come across.

It's conceivable that both said the same thing, in their own way, with no influence from the other. From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (emphasis mine):

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are
several—one of the many major problems with governing people is
that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get
people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most
want to rule people are, ipso facto,

The big, huge security hole though, is that the key is made up of the passport number, the date of birth of the holder, and the expiry date, none of which are hard to come by. For example, the postman delivering your new passport can probably find your date of birth (when did you late get a birthday card?), and can make a pretty good guess as to when it expires (10 years plus or minus a few days), so if he can guess what the passport number is,

Why not make the key some random digit string, printed inside the passport in machine-readable text? Then it would at least be impossible to read the passport without opening it.

Off the top of my head (might be missing something obvious), by forcing the key to be made up of useful data, it becomes impossible to divorce the key from the holder's identifying information, as printed on the passport. By requiring the operator to enter the user's data as part of the key to decode the electronic data, it sort

See my other reply to the GP, the security hole is that the key is make up of information that is not single-purpose. The expiry date of your passport, you date of birth, and your passport number. None of these are particularly secret, and someone could obtain them without arousing any suspicion and read the passport from your pocket (or the envelope it was posted in....).

If, alternatively, the key was some random string that was ONLY used for the key, then (1) it wouldn't be possible to guess it witho

The Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org](Think UK EFF) have a wiki page that provideds more information on this an othere issues with the British Biometric Passport [openrightsgroup.org]
The European version of the biometric passport is planned to have digital imaging and fingerprint scan biometrics placed on the Radio Frequency chip. The government of UK thinks that the public has a negative opinion of RFID chips so instead they call it a contactless chip.

There is a huge difference between "RFID chips" and "contactless smart cards"! They both use the same frequency band and similar communication protocols, but RFID chips have no crypto while contactless smart cards have all the AES, MAC, etc. stuff plus secure filesystem storage.There is a huge difference, I keep posting this but nobody seems to get the point: the walmart RFID chips have zero crypto, but the passport, payment cards have a ton of crypto. You can't just dump their contents

Yes I'm sure it's not very hard to 'read' what's stored on the Passport - but then it's never been very hard to visually look at it and read the paper - god knows how many photocopies there are of my passport in hotels and car-rentals across the planet.
The point of the RFID passport et al is to be able to verify it's genuine. You wave the passport at a border, it summons the electronic version and a check can be made that they match - i.e. verifies that somebody hasn't inserted an alternate photo etc.
If t

but then it's never been very hard to visually look at it and read the paper

Not when it's in my pocket.

I can't believe how juicy this is. Imagine being able to get your dirty fingers on the theft prevention system at the doors or a department store. Just a slight modification of the frequency and code, and let the harvesting begin.

The information on the chip is just information that is already printed on the passport. Having an RFID chip, however, makes it easier to read into a computer. Normally a border guard has to manually type your passport information into a computer. If you have ever waited 20 minutes for a border guard who doesn't speak or write english, to type in your passport information (imagine if you were trying to type up someone's cyrillic passport) - A quick swipe of an RFID card would turn the process into a 2 secon

Most modern passports have an OCR section now on the ID page (and this is a condition of visa-less entry into the US now). All international passports cary the main data in Latin characters as well as the original Cyrillic, Arabic. Hebrew or whatever. Technically this is a French transliteration, which may actually be a slightly different to the English.

How is this different than Xeroxing a 2D barcode? Isn't that why there's biometric data on the passport and a digitally encoded photo - to render it useless even when cloned? Not to mention that the passport # *could* key to a database with the same data for verification purposes - the database should also contain records of passport #'s invalidated due to theft, cloning, or whatever. The data on the RFID chip is *meant* to be read. Rerecording the bitstream is a trivial exercise.

Passports and other pieces of identification never bring a nation security or safety.

Ok, but the fact is that we *already* have a lot of pissed-off people wanting to fuck the "West" in any way they can. We do want to prevent them from entering our countries and doing harm. Far better to stop them at the borders rather than enacting Draconian *internal* security measures to protect against terrorism. And, BTW, there's already a database of passport data (at least in the US) - even in the 80s when I was

If somebody wants to get into a nation, they will, regardless of whether or not they're carrying a (real or fake) passport.

No need to make it easier for them, though. By your logic, nations shouldn't even *try* to stop foreign criminals from entering their borders? Internal ID cards, etc, are a separate issue that isn't being discussed here, and good external security reduces the need for internal clampdowns.

"It is hard to see why anyone would want to access the information on the chip."

I think it's time someone cloned his passport and got busted importing drugs or weaponry or child porn or similar while on that passport. Hell, he's probably got a diplomatic passport == no search. Pure gold to anyone wanting to move anything *really* profitable.

I think it's time someone cloned his passport and got busted importing drugs or weaponry or child porn or similar while on that passport.

Isn't that the point of the biometric data/electronic photo - to make cloning the passport more difficult since the data in the chip has to match the person. If the bio. data is encrypted with a private key, the forger would have to know that key before forging the passport. They could even use, say, 10,000 different private keys to encrypt depending on the value of a

My comment was intended more cynically - if what the article suggests is true (cloning a passport is trivial) then someone should demonstrate the utility of such an act.Having said that, from the article: "Now for the clever bit. Thanks to a software he himself has developed, called RFdump, he downloads the passport's data onto his computer and then onto a blank chip. Using a standard off-the-shelf component you can just buy at a component store you can have a cloned ePassport in less than five minutes. W

How about having an electronic switch built in to the passport, so that the chip only works when someone holding it wants it to work. For example, you could set it up so that the chip only works when the passport is opened flat on the details page at the front.I can't imagine it being that hard in theory, although divising a reliable and rugged switch may be a bit more challenging.

Still, I bet it could be done, and it pretty much eliminates all the concerns about people reading the chip without your permiss

a smart bomb, planted by a terrorist group, to trigger when n passports from a target country are in the vicinity, as long as fewer than x passports from countries friendly to the terrorists are also present.

Alternatively, imagine a government putting monitoring devices in public places, or at the entry ways to residential buildings, and tracking when/if people of certain profiled countries are congregating.

What I worry about is a working hack that allows people to insert a different photograph into the information on the chip. There is not border guard in the world who will reject a passport if his electronic scanner shows the photo of the person standing in front of him.

In the "old days" a passport could have had a new photo glued over the top. These could be spotted and rejected. Any new hacks that had a glued-over photo that corresponded with the pic in the RFID chip, would be far less likely to be picked

Just once, when one of these government prats is bragging about their latest and greatest hard-to-forge ID paraphernalia, I hope SOME reporter will point out the uncomfortable fact that none of the 9/11 perps were travelling with forged documents. They had passports in their own names, and credit cards. They made NO attempt to conceal their identities, and in fact were most likely hoping to be hailed as heroes by their fellow fanatics.

If the bad guys were still in the business of trying to bring down airplanes, they'd use people with squeaky-clean records to do the attacks. Let's not kid ourselves, they HAVE people with squeaky-clean records.

Many people here seem to make claims on RFID security without knowledge of the technology actually used. I have done some research on the subject so I think I can give some pointers. Details about the technology can be found at ICAO's web page [icao.int] and short presentation on the subject
Jacobs/Wichers Schreur [utwente.nl].

The communication between the password and the reader is encrypted using information in the Machine Readable Zone at the bottom of the passport. This is the basic way to authorize passport reading. The MRZ-information is generated from the information of the passport holder and random numbers. If bad numbering scheme [whatthehack.org] is used, breaking the encryption is quite possible. If large enough random numbers are used, breaking the encryption with brute force is currently not practical.

The authentication is done using public key cryptography. Currently only Passive Authentication is mandatory, but Active Authentiacation is supported and it is mandatory when fingerprint information is contained in the passport. With only Passive Authentication cloning of MRZ-compromized passport is easy, but with Active Authentication it should be unfeasibly difficult.

Reading and cloning an European RFID passport which is using all available security measures (like the e-passports in Finland) is not as trivia as many people here seem to think. As long as there are no backdoors in the cryptography (e.g. for the intelligence agencies) I think the technology is quite sound. Not using all available cryptography is just bad choise by the goverment issuing the passports.

The scheme in TFA is nothing new and nothing revolutionary. If you have physical access to a passport with only Passive Authentication cloning is trivial, as pointed in TFA. This is actually how the technology was designed to work. Maybe the design is bad, but that is hardly big suprise, since the technology is compromize between many organizations and goverments. When someone clones a passport which has Active Authentication, then that is real news.

RFID IDs are TERRIBLE for personal security, because it adds RANGE to detection and forgery. Parent post has ABSOLUTELY missed the point.

No one is claiming that magnetic stripes and/or bar codes are bad for security. In both cases they make it very marginally harder to copy and virtually eliminate data-entry errors. RFID has a BIG problem beyond that: It can be read without the knowledge of the holder.

No one can read the inside of my paper passport without me giving it to them - nor my magstripe nor bar code. I have complete control over who sees it. Sure, I might be conned into showing someone, but they have to con me. RFID means that:

1. They can copy my information without me ever showing it to them.2. They can READ my information without me ever showing them, allowing them to identify me from a distance.3. Even with a perfectly random RFID system, they can identify your nationality from afar, which obviously may make you a target in some circumstances.

To be SAFE, an RFID system must have a) zero emissions in the closed state (eg a tested foil cover) AND b) No non-random information broadcast from the chip. (that is, a random passportID that is broadcast that has NO other information until you look it up in the appropriate database.)

"b" is necessary because "a" alone still allows someone nearby you to snoop whenever you have to show your passport somewhere.

If you're a tourist in another country, the LAST thing you would normally want to do is advertise that fact.

For whatever reason, this brought to mind part of one of Laurie Anderson's song/stories from her "The Ugly One with the Jewels" album:

[...] I especially remember an interesting list of tips devised by the US embassy in Madrid, and these tips were designed for Americans who found themselves in war-time airports. The idea was not to call ourselves to the attention of the numerous foreign terro

If the passport cover was some sort of Faraday cage wouldn't this block remote reading unless it is open, or the foil like you pointed out? And if they put Faraday cages around areas where the chip is supposed to be read wouldn't this make attempted remote reading very suspicious? Would some system like this meet your approval?

There is a serious misunderstanding of the technology, yes even among slashdot users. The problem is that the media and slashdot refer generically to 'rfid' when they talk about two different things:

1) Simple RFID chips that can be scan and read by anyone2) Contactless smart cards (ISO 14443 etc), with crypto

Both use the same frequency band and similar hardware, but they are different beasts: one has crypto and the other doth not.

Identity information can be put on a contactless smart card but depending on how it is implemented (hopefully securely) you probably will NEED A KEY otherwise the crypto will prevent access. Take a wireless payment card or credit card (#2 category) for example. You can't just read/dump the bank account numbers on it. There is a crypto protecting the data.

On the other hand, walmart uses the non-crypto rfid chips. Yes you can just read the info on them, there is no encryption.

So when you say "RFID is terrible for personal security" you're right, RFID (#1 above) is completely inappropriate for privacy. But contactless smart cards (#2 above) is totally appropriate, and the passports use #2

Except that you can use #2 with no crypto or bad crypto as well. Which is exactly what the epassports are doing. They have such bad keys that it is easy to brute-force crack them open in a couple of minutes. Most well-designed systems using the same standard have non-trivial keys, which makes them a lot more secure than the ICAO epassport standard.

The fun thing is that the moment the standard was created, everyone said that this is going to be a field day for the press when the first researcher figures out that the keys are so weak. The day has arrived:)

In reality the issue is blown out of proportion: the epassport is not that much of a privacy issue. Tourists can be spotted by a mile away by simply the way that they look and walk, and the smart tourist will leave the passport in the hotel safe anyway, carrying only a photocopy with him. You are in far more trouble if your passport gets stolen than if it gets copied: if you do not have your passport, dealing with any authorities in a strange country is going to be a problem, whereas if your passport gets copied, you still have the original.

Also, forging a passport is no easier than before - in fact, getting the digital and the physical passport data to match becomes a lot harder with the epassports. Reading something does not mean you can change it and write it back, as surely is well understood by anyone familiar with digital signatures.

I don't doubt they are terrible implementations (I happen to think that the key entropy is way too small on the e-passports I have studied). I am just pointing out the difference between RFID chips and contactless smart cards.

You are in far more trouble if your passport gets stolen than if it gets copied: if you do not have your passport, dealing with any authorities in a strange country is going to be a problem, whereas if your passport gets copied, you still have the original.

The problems with passports can be much more subtle, so I wouldn't count on the fact that adding the same data in RFID mode didn't do anything else than just have some redundancy to prevent reading errors.

Of course it can be. All you'd need to do would be to somehow zap the old RFID and attach another one in an inconspicuous fashion - possibly somehow inject it into the edge or the paperboard cover. Either that, or have a transmitter (concealed in a cell phone?) that happens to transmit the correct data at higher power when the passport is swiped. To activate it, pretend to scratch your leg.

Sure it makes things wildly insecure. You know lazy tired TSA workers will only glance at the passport and just trust what the display says. The usefulness works like this... I'm an evil terrorist, I know I can't get on planes.... I can remotely grab another passengers RFID tag in line at the boarding pass counter with a ticket on same flight I wish to perform evil deeds... even easier than pickpocketing!! Now I get THEIR pass info, forge my hacked RFID chip with their passport ID...it doesn't have to be

3. Is it correct that forging RFID passports will be more difficult? Obviously, if you used to have to manufacture a passport or switch a picture, and you now need to _both_ do that _and_ insert or change an RFID chip, then that raises the bar. So the followups to this question are;

Not really. I'm sure RFID writers are cheap enough for those who "need" them anyway to afford them. The biometrics afford the security. You could have (say) a retinal scan or a point map of a face saved in the RFID chip and

It might not be that big of a deal but the very idea is disturbing. Sure, one could get the data by hiring a pickpocket but that is more troublesome given the fact that the passport holder would surely know that his/her passport was missing and would give warnings/alerts to ensure that it would not be misused. But now, you only need to setup a clever RFID reader/scanner and just sit beside the person. That person would never know what hit him. If someone gets any data from one's passport, that doesn't neces

"but to own and operate the technology to achieve this seems to be no less complex than having a $20 pick-pocket help you get it."

Do you travel? I ask because I do, and I would like to see a "$20 pick-pocket" take my passport. I don't exactly carry it where this would be possible. And when I'm not carrying it, it's usually in a hotel safe. I tend to want to be able to get back into my country, so I'm carefull like that.

Putting an RFID chip on it changes this game. Unless I have a cage around it, the inside